


the dog days

by vague_ambition



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Fluff, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, On the Run, POV Remus Lupin, Post-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24131014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vague_ambition/pseuds/vague_ambition
Summary: Remus doesn't hear from Sirius after he flees Hogwarts and, presumably, England until the height of summer, when he receives a cryptic letter directing him to the heart of Muggle London. In the hope of safely seeing his friend again, he follows the path Sirius hints at, turning his dull, lonely post-Marauders daily life into something a bit more like the future he had imagined before he lost everything.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	1. Even the darkest night

**Author's Note:**

> Update 13/05: I changed the quote at the end of chapter one because the original one I used appears to have been a misattribution.

Remus Lupin’s life took on a set, dull routine after he left Hogwarts the second time. He looked for a letter in the morning, or any hint of an owl. He went to whatever temp job he was working at the time, based on the fabricated resume which had helped him whenever he was in-between wizarding jobs—which was frequent. He considered writing to Harry but did not. He considered writing to Dumbledore to ask if there was anything he could do but did not. He stared out the window again for any sign of an owl or a big black dog. He barely made rent, and he bought the bare minimum of groceries. He read, he went to sleep, and he got up again the next morning somehow.

Sometimes things changed. He wrote a letter, via post, to his mother and was grateful when shortly after he received not only a letter but a lovely bottle of whiskey in the mail, something he could not have bought himself. He drank a glass of the whiskey reading, and he went to sleep. He realized he could be doing research, so he began checking out books from the Diagon Alley library on wizarding law, reading about murder cases where the defendant was let off after the trial. He researched trials from the war, trying to figure out why Veritaserum hadn’t been used on Sirius during his trial. He realized Sirius hadn’t gotten a trial. He drank some more whiskey, and he went to sleep, before getting up to temp again.

It felt unbearable, impossible that he was sitting here in his cheap apartment in Hackney while Sirius Black was free, and alive, and running away somewhere. He longed to reach out to his old friend, but Dumbledore had implied that any contact Remus initiated could jeopardize Sirius’s safety, and he was not going to do that. It felt unbearable that he had allowed one of his best friends to languish in Azkaban for twelve years ( _longer than you knew him,_ a voice in his head kept reminding him) after all that he had done for him without ever once checking he had gotten a fair trial.

Sometimes, he sat and thought about the past, something he had avoided for years. He thought about Sirius and James and yes, Peter. He realized that he had never fully been able to conceive of Sirius as a traitor, but it had taken him all of half an hour to believe Peter had sold Lily and James out. That should’ve tipped him off years ago.

He thought about fifth year, the day that the others had come to him and, vibrating with nervous excitement, informed him that they had figured out how to make the full moon more bearable. How could he not have even looked into Sirius’s trial, when Sirius had been so caring to him every month after that? How could he have let his friend suffer for twelve years when it took Sirius less than five years of knowing him before he tried to alleviate his greatest problem?

He thought about sixth year, and the prank, and the way Sirius slept on the couches in the common room until Remus had been able to look at him again. He thought about after Hogwarts, when Sirius held his and James’s hair back as they felt the full effects of James’s stag do. He thought about hugging him in the Shrieking Shack for the first time in over a decade, the feeling of not actually being alone, and he wanted to scream at himself. But he didn’t scream, because if he did he might never stop. 

So instead he kept reading, and researching, temping, and sleeping, and drinking whiskey, and hoping that Sirius would reach out, but terrified that he would be caught.

It wasn’t until Remus was sitting down for a sparse dinner of a cheese toastie on a Wednesday in mid-July when an unfamiliar, brightly coloured bird tapped on the window that these hopes were realised. Wearily, he stood up and opened the window, where the bird, unusually eager to leave, barely stood still long enough for him to detach the letter before it took off again. He opened the envelope slowly.

> _Moony--_
> 
> _I miss London in the summer. Do you remember the day we all went to the Muggle theatre thingy, with the singing? There’s a different show on tonight, 7:30, same theatre._
> 
> _\--Padfoot_

Remus stared at the parchment in front of him. He hadn’t heard from Sirius since the night he escaped Hogwarts a few weeks prior. This was…not the communication he had expected. A brief letter with no specifics, sure. A discussion of Muggle musicals? Not so much.

Why would Sirius risk sending an owl just to tell him there was a show on at the Palace Theatre? There was a show on at the Palace Theatre every night, more or less. Several weeks ( _over twelve years,_ he thought in the back of his mind) without communication and all he wanted to tell him was that there was a bloody show on at a theatre that Remus might not even remember the name of, since it’d been well over a decade since Lily had dragged them all to the West End, claiming that they weren’t appreciating Muggle culture enough. James and Sirius had been very confused, if he remembered correctly.

Remus stared at the letter again, flipping it over as though there might be something more revealing written on the back.

“Revelio,” he said, tapping the parchment with his wand. Nothing. That’d be too simple, a second-year could figure it out if they were clever enough.

“Come on, Pads,” he muttered, flipping the parchment over again. “Give me something to work with here…” Any details would be enough—wait. He was being stupid, because Sirius had given him details. He had told him a time, a date, and a place. Remus glanced at his clock—he had just enough time to change into something more appropriate for the West End and apparate over.

Once at the theatre, Remus realised he had absolutely no idea what else to do. He scanned the crowd around him, afraid that Sirius was about to appear, despite the absolute idiocy it would take for Sirius to come to London. There was a line of people trying to get tickets, although they seemed to be largely sold out. He slid in line, as to better fit in while he looked around for any hint of why Sirius had sent him here.

“Do you have a ticket here at the door, or are you trying to buy one, dearie?” the box office staffer asked. Remus started, not realizing that he had reached the front, before considering.

“Erm, I think a friend may have left a ticket for me?” he suggested. “Under the last name Lupin?” She rifled through a box of alphabetized tickets before coming up with one.

“Here you are…that’s some friend you’ve got there, you’re right down in the stalls,” she smiled warmly, passing the ticket through to him. Remus stared at the ticket in confusion.

“Thank you,” he remembered to say before walking through the doors of the theatre, where he followed the directions on his ticket to the third row of seats. What was Sirius playing at? He sat down, looking around tensely. No sign of Sirius, thank Merlin.

When the music began, he almost forgot why he was in this theatre in the first place, captivated entirely by the story. At the interval, he was once again on edge, not only because he was attempting to figure out what Sirius was up to but also because he was very interested in the second act. Maybe Sirius had just wanted him to…relax? It was a strange idea. It would be entirely out of character. But did he know his character anymore?

That question was answered, at least in part, when Remus returned to his seat. Sitting upon his chair was a programme he hadn’t bought. He flipped through it to see, on the last page, a familiar scrawl.

> _M—I was reading one of those books you couldn’t keep your nose out of back in school, picked the bloke because his name sounded fun. He wrote this: “ A prison wall was round us both, / Two outcast men were we: / The world had thrust us from its heart, / And God from out His care: / And the iron gin that waits for Sin / Had caught us in its snare.” –P_

So Sirius had sent him to an admittedly phenomenal musical, in order to leave a note about an obscure, vaguely familiar-sounding quote in the programme. At least he hadn’t lost his flair for the dramatic in prison.

Comforted that Sirius Black was not about to materialize beside him and get himself arrested, Remus let himself relax a little bit as the second act began. He had work to do when he got home, sure, but he could at least wait out the play. After all, Sirius clearly thought (correctly) he would enjoy it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have most of the next chapter written and the whole fic planned out. Also, I know I'm not subtle but if you want to make guesses as to what's going to happen or anything, it'd be fun!


	2. For his mourners will be outcast men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update 13/05: I had to change the quote in the previous chapter because it appeared misattributed, but I think this one worked better anyway, so if you already read ch 1 you might want to check!

Seven hours after the musical had finished, Remus found himself surrounded by every book he had retained from his Hogwarts days, wildly skimming through them for anything even remotely similar to the quote that Sirius had copied out. It had taken him several hours to remember where he had stored them and collect them, and now he rubbed his eyes, wishing he had decided to go to sleep and wake up to search, instead of pushing through. Too late now, though—he was on his third cup of coffee. Sleep was not a possibility.

Unfortunately, much to his friends’ chagrin at the time and now his own, he had read a lot at Hogwarts. At least ten boxes of books a lot. He only had two boxes of Muggle novels and one box of schoolbooks left, at least. Heaving a sigh, he turned to the box of textbooks before reconsidering. He had read a lot of Muggle authors at school and Sirius had left the note at a Muggle play, so perhaps that was the best route to take. He ripped open a box he hadn’t touched for ages, pulling out book after book—Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Allen Ginsberg all spilled out and with them, his memories of his sexuality crisis, his fear that the others would find out, and his slightly torn copy of _Collected Poetry_ by W.H. Auden, where “Funeral Blues” had been dogeared, tearstained, and lastly, largely unopened since the end of 1981, when he had told himself he had to stop mourning fourfold, for his lost friends and for the friend he had thought killed them. He flinched at that and pushed through, grabbing his collected works of Oscar Wilde before—hang on. His name sounded fun, Sirius had written. Was that a justification or a hint? Sirius would certainly associate wild with fun, knowing him, and he could never resist a pun.

Prison, the note had mentioned prison. Wilde had gone to prison, shortly before he died. ( _For sodomy, no less_ his treacherous inner voice felt the need to add. Remus dismissed this, as there was no way Sirius knew that.) He even wrote some stuff after about prison, including a long poem…

Feverishly, hands shaking, he leafed through the plays and _Dorian Gray_ until finally coming to _The Ballad of Reading Gaol._ He read through the first section of the poem with no success, and was again rubbing his tired eyes when he hit on the word “outcast.” There it was, the full quote, at the end of the second section.

Okay, so Sirius was sitting around reading poetry about being in prison in his spare time, now that he was out of prison? And apparently reading reviews of Muggle musicals? Sirius was trying to communicate something—he had to be. Why else would he risk delivering letters and programmes, of all things? It seemed completely random. What did Oscar Wilde and _Les Misérables_ and Sirius Black have in common, anyway?

Remus snorted a little bit, feeling on edge and hysterical. They all had prison in common, he supposed, although Wilde had certainly been guilty of _his_ crime. And the musical had opened in a prison, although Remus had rather preferred the parts set in Paris.

He stared longer at the poem. Maybe there was something more to be found there. The phrase “outcast” caught his eye again, at the end of the third section. He read: “ _And alien tears will fill for him / Pity's long-broken urn, / For his mourners will be outcast men, / And outcasts always mourn.”_ Unexpectedly, his own eyes welled with tears in response. He had read this quote before too, he was sure. It seemed more familiar to him than the previous one.

Remus rubbed his eyes again, discomforted by the dawn light creeping in through the window—he should have slept. He certainly wouldn’t be crying now had he gotten rest. Perhaps sleep would help him solve the problem now, he could reread the poem again after a few hours. Groaning, he forced himself to move to the bed before closing his eyes once more.

He awoke feeling if not rested, vaguely better, the mid-morning light slanting across his face, suggesting he hadn’t slept for that long. Sure enough, the clockface showed that it was just past eleven.

Remus puttered his way through the process of making and buttering toast and brewing a cup of tea, half asleep still. He stared again at the poem Sirius had quoted, its words no clearer with a few hours of sleep than it was with none. It only provided him with more questions. Why had Sirius picked this poem? Why that musical? The musical, perhaps, Remus could understand. He had enjoyed the novel, after all, and before…everything…Sirius had made it his personal mission to cajole Remus into enjoying himself as much as possible, but quoting a relatively obscure Wilde quote was strange. Why, for that matter, had he done all this yesterday instead of three weeks ago, or last week? Had yesterday been significant in some way?

Head a little clearer but still swimming with questions, Remus walked over to the counter where he had set his diary. He flipped it open, absentmindedly noting he had nine days until the moon. Was it the moon’s proximity that had started Sirius off? Probably not, he would’ve picked a closer date if that was the case.

Yesterday had been the 13th of July, was that anything? He chuckled a little bit—Sirius had missed the perfect opportunity to send him to that musical on Bastille Day. He should’ve held off for one day, it would have been very on the nose to see a musical about a French Revolution on the celebration of the first one. No luck, he set the diary down and was in the middle of making a second cup of tea when it hit him and his teacup clattered down on the counter beneath him, luckily not breaking.

It was too on the nose, actually. A musical about a convict escaping the law, where he found some refuge in Paris. Wilde had…hang on, Remus had a biography around here somewhere. He pulled out and flipped to the epilogue, where it said…yes, Wilde had died there. He, too, had left prison and headed to Paris. 

That bastard.


	3. And outcasts always mourn

What did Oscar Wilde, _Les Misérables,_ and Sirius Black have in common? Apparently, they were all in Paris.

Remus was once more overwhelmed with questions: Why was he in Paris? It was too close to England to truly be safe, right? Also, why was Sirius telling him where he was in the first place? His heart surged with hope that Sirius was asking Remus to come meet him, but that seemed unlikely. In the first letter, Sirius had left him a time, a date, and a specific place. Right now, all Remus had was a whole city. Except…

Sirius could’ve quoted any work by any author who was in Paris at any point. A French author, for instance, may have been a little more useful. Instead, he picked Wilde, who had died in Paris. Meaning he was probably _still_ in Paris. Remus glanced back at the epilogue in front of him and with a jolt, he recognized the same stanza that had finished off the third section of _Reading Gaol._ It was the inscription on Wilde’s tombstone. There was his place. Today was Bastille Day…

Surely Sirius didn’t expect him to get to Paris _today._ He couldn’t apparate there—even if it wasn’t too far to apparate in one bound, Remus had never even been there. There’s no way he could get the adequate Destination figured out to safely do it. Beyond Apparation, there were Portkeys, brooms, and the Floo system, but any international Portkey _or_ Floo would go through the Ministry. Sirius was on the run and Snape had reported to the Minister himself that Remus and Sirius had seemed friendly, surely any kind of international travel would draw attention. He didn’t even own a broomstick, let alone one good enough to cross the Channel.

Remus glanced again at the book and programme sitting on his small kitchen table, hoping for any additional hint. He was still surprised that Sirius knew enough about a Muggle author to encode his clues that deeply, but he was probably banking on Wizarding society’s utter disinterest in Muggles for an extra layer of safety. After all, nobody was reading Oscar Wilde before eleven, and after that, it was still pretty rare for Muggle-born witches and wizards to spend tons of time immersed in Muggle culture, to Lily’s dismay.

But maybe it wasn’t just security. Both hints—or all three, if he counted the tombstone location—were firmly Muggle. Perhaps Remus was meant to travel like a Muggle.

Without really thinking about it, Remus was on his feet, pulling his travelling case out of the wardrobe. He packed quickly, methodically. Muggles either travelled by car, train, plane, or boat. While the Muggle newspapers said there would be a passenger train open that went under the Channel by the end of the year, right now it was only the latter two, and a boat would take too long. Normally, he wouldn’t have the money for a flight, but he hadn’t yet depleted his savings from working at Hogwarts. In the back of his mind, he knew it was insane to blow some of his savings on a last-minute flight to Paris when he didn’t know when he was next going to get a job.

He also knew that this was the first time since he had left Hogwarts that he had felt even vaguely excited by something.

Remus kept debating to himself even as he packed. He couldn’t guarantee he could get back for the moon—but he had been transforming for years and had always been able to find somewhere suitable, even if he was traveling for Dumbledore. Could he be leading the Aurors right to Sirius? Was this even safe? Then again, when was a better time to visit a city discreetly than during the height of their tourist season and during a major holiday? The French Aurors would be preoccupied with their own problems, the kind that usually arose when spirits rose high and there were hopes that Muggles wouldn’t notice that some of the fireworks were particularly active. Why should he go, though? What would he and Sirius do in Paris anyway? He refused to let his mind even begin to wander to the kind of things he had once tried not to hope for—sun-filled days and kissing and holding hands in a kind of daydream state. They had planned on going away once, the summer after Hogwarts, all five of them, but then the war broke out so viciously that the idea of leaving England seemed laughable. He had only ever left for Order business, and that usually involved a lot of werewolves and absolutely no sightseeing. Their whole youth, lost to a war that filled them with tensions and fear that kept mounting and mounting until that horrible October, three years later.

He shook himself and cast a cursory glance over his flat. He had all the essentials. Remus didn’t know who he was kidding with his ongoing internal debate—he always would come running if Sirius called.

With the crack of Apparition, he materialized in a discreet corner of Heathrow. The bustle of the airport hid the sound well enough, and he quickly searched out Air France. They were bound to have a flight to Paris that day.

“Sir, how may I help you?” asked the desk attendant. Right.

“Do you have any flights to Paris today? A friend is there unexpectedly and I want to meet up with him as soon as possible.” Remus knew he sounded ridiculous and realized belatedly he didn’t need to explain himself. From the attendant’s knowing look, he was incredibly transparent in his eagerness.

“May I see your passport? I’ll check that first and then we’ll get your best ticket options figured out.” She smiled at him and Remus handed over the Muggle passport he was suddenly so glad he had renewed. She typed something into her computer before looking up, raising her eyebrows. “Mr. Lupin, it seems you have already booked a ticket for today. Your flight is leaving quite soon, at 2:46pm. You should have more than enough time for security. I’ll print your ticket off for you now.”

Remus tried not to show his surprise as she handed him a ticket and his passport back. He thanked her for her time and then headed to the indicated security checkpoint. Sirius had really been pushing his luck by buying him a ticket in advance, not that he wasn’t relieved he didn’t have to pay for it. But he had really been gambling that Remus not only understood he was trying to send a message, but that he would figure out the message in time.

Security was a relatively easy process, and Remus only had an hour or so before boarding to try to calm his nerves. It wouldn’t be his first time on an airplane—he and his mother had gone to visit cousins in America without his father once, and a friend of hers in Ireland another time—but it was his first time in two decades, at least. Even clandestine work would take place with illegal Portkeys, which he had grown adept at making, and was beginning to regret not using. But not knowing anything about the landscape was risky, and it was usually discouraged to take a Portkey at random into the middle of a crowded city.

During boarding, the anxiety welled back up, which Remus tried again to ignore by focusing why he was getting on a place in the first place. Yes, he had seen Sirius briefly that night ( _and if it wasn’t for you, he’d be a free man_ , he couldn’t help but hear echo in his head) but he hadn’t properly seen his friend without a war looming and suspicions clouding everything since…

Lily and James’s second wedding anniversary, June 1981. Lily and James had hosted a party, dropped Harry with a sitter—Remus had thought of her at the time as Gideon and Fabian’s sister, but realized now it had been Molly Weasley and her family—for what was probably the last time. The Longbottoms had been there, Dorcas and Marlene had just gotten married a few months prior. Caradoc, who had always bit a bit on the outskirts, had spent the whole night flirting with Marlene before realizing, he remembered, while the Prewett twins just egged him on, despite having attended the wedding. The next time he saw any of them was Marlene’s funeral.

Sirius had been brilliant that night, beautiful and vibrant in every way. Lily had laughed so hard at some joke or another that Sirius and James had staged—Remus wished he remembered what it was—that she had sat on the floor crying for a full minute. At one point, he and Sirius had found themselves outside on the porch, smoking together. Sirius had stared at him for a long minute before grabbing him by the waist and pulling him in. Remus hadn’t known what was happening, but Sirius began to fully snog him, before pulling back, tossing his hair, and acting like it had never happened until the end of the night, when he kissed Remus deeply instead of embracing him as a goodbye.

They had never talked about it. Remus went, at Dumbledore’s bequest, to go live with the werewolves, and the next time he saw him, Sirius’s eyes had become hard and mistrusting.

The plane lurched, yanking him firmly into the present. At least he could probably perform a decent cushioning charm if the thing went down, he reminded himself.

The other bad part about non-instantaneous travel, he realized about a half hour into the flight, is that he had much more time to dwell on the ways this could go wholly wrong. But Sirius wanted him there, he reminded himself. He had gone to incredible lengths including, apparently, learning how to buy a Muggle airline ticket, to get Remus there. Remus wasn’t sure what would be waiting for him in France, or what was going to happen, but he did know that he was definitely, without a doubt, wanted there.

He repeated this to himself over and over again until the plane touched down at Charles de Gaulle, where it took rather less time than he had expected to disembark. He stuttered through asking the tourist desk how to get to the centre of Paris in his rusty French, and he found himself sitting on the RER, his nose pressed to the window despite himself to watch the Paris suburbs turn into the city itself. He traced the Muggle transit route from his current location to the graveyard on his map and made sure his wand was fully accessible but concealed as he stumbled onto the second line—so named, his guidebook informed him, because it was the second line of the Paris metro, opened in 1900 and unchanging since 1903—and, in a bit of a daze, ascended at Père Lachaise station.

Remus took a moment to breathe in the air, standing in Paris for the first time in his life, stepping outside of his well-worn routine for something not related to the Order or to finding a job or to trying to merely exist—for himself, really—for the first time since 1981. Something with the potential to make him happy, instead of just less miserable.

It took him longer than he would care to admit once he entered the cemetery to get his bearings, and perhaps a little longer because he walked past a familiar name more than once and stopped in awe. Finally, though, he walked up to a huge, sculpted, white stone tomb covered in lipstick kisses, with the name and inscription he had been searching for.

“For his mourners will be outcast men,” he murmured, again choked with emotion for reasons he couldn’t fully name, reeling from the last four hours of his life.

He didn’t hear the footsteps, or feel anyone approaching, until the person behind him spoke, startling him despite the familiarity of the hoarse voice: “And outcasts always mourn.”


	4. A house with high windows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Live Fast, Die Old" by Frank Turner, who is amazing.

Remus turned slowly, as though Sirius would disappear if he wasn’t cautious. His breath caught in his throat as he met the other man’s grey eyes, finding them to be more guarded than they used to be, but happier than they had been in the Shack.

“Hi Remus,” Sirius said, after a moment that could have been a second or may have been a year. “I see you got my letter.”

Remus took in the other man, dressed in Muggle clothes instead of prison rags. He had seen better days—Remus had been there for them—but he looked like he had been eating, at least, and showering. The circles under his eyes were still dark, and he was too thin, and fragile-looking, and pale, although he had more colour than he had a few weeks ago.

He was still beautiful, anyway.

“Hi,” Remus said back, his voice coming out more breathlessly than he wanted it to. “Since when do you read Oscar Wilde?”

Sirius smiled wanly. “Twelve years and the first time we have a chance for a real conversation, that’s what you ask?”

“Thirteen years, now.” Remus pointed out, tensing a little as the memories of that last good night rose in his mind again. Sirius looked a little ashamed—perhaps he, too, was thinking of Lily and James’s last anniversary.

They stared at each other for another, long moment before Sirius spoke. “It was the only English book I could find at the bookstore, first place I went to when I left. I had seen this tomb before, and that’s how I got the idea.”

Whatever standoff they had just had, Remus had won. “Seems risky, Sirius,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “What if they had figured out how to track telephone calls?”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “They haven’t. I’m not convinced they know what telephones are.” Remus cracked a smile at that, and Sirius gave him a tentative half smile back. It was like seeing a ray of sun after years of darkness, and Remus’s knees felt weak.

“What if I hadn’t figured it out in time?” Remus pointed out, something he had been thinking about since he realized Sirius had bought an airline ticket.

“Remus John Lupin,” Sirius drawled, stepping very much into Remus’s personal space. He tried to tell himself that he had no reason to be dizzy just because Sirius was close to him. And looking at him. “You are far too clever to have not figured it out in time. I would always bet on your cleverness.”

Remus’s heartbeat was racing, but he tried to hold his face steady. “Isn’t Paris a little too close to England?” he asked, taking a light step back. There, he could at least think a little clearer now.

“That’s what makes it perfect.” If Remus didn’t know better, he would say that Sirius looked almost disappointed for a moment, before rearranging his face back into the same, vaguely playful, half-smiling expression. “It’s close, and crowded. Plus, they won’t think to comb through Muggle Paris. They’ll focus on wizarding places further off. And there’s a flat here.”

“A flat?” Remus echoed. “I would imagine there are flats all around the world.”

“Uncle Alphard left me more than just gold,” Sirius said as his smile grew into a full grin and despite his desire to ensure that this was safe before playing along, Remus felt his mouth lifting in return. Sirius extended his arm out to him, and Remus, still desperately trying to remain moderately stoic, took it. “Shall we?” Remus nodded, his mouth dry, and felt the unpleasant lurch of Side-Along Apparation.

They rematerialized in a sun-drenched flat that had the kind of high windows Remus always associated with the home of the upper class. Through the window, Remus could see that they were very high up, and a large park unfolded below, packed with people enjoying the weather and the day off. Past the park, the city stretched on, and he realized with a jolt he could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

“That’s the Jardin Luxembourg,” Sirius said casually, the French pronunciation falling flawlessly off his tongue in a way which made Remus shiver a little bit. “And tonight we’ll be able to watch the fireworks display from the roof, if you want.”

“Is this place safe? Will you get caught?” Remus asked, tearing his eyes away from the view.

“It’s warded to the teeth,” Sirius gave him the same half smile he had first shown in the graveyard. “Uncle Alphard had some…preferences that were rather illegal at the time _and_ frowned upon by the Black family, so he set this place up to be secretive. Legally, it’s never existed and it’s more hidden than even my parents’ old place. I didn’t even know about it until I found a note he had left in code for me in an old book of his about four years after he died, but that was in…October.”

He didn’t need to clarify which October.

“Well,” Remus said, trying to tamp down the swell of emotion which always came with the mention of that last, horrible month. “You know what they say about confirmed bachelors.” He smirked at Sirius, who stared at him in shock for a moment before laughing.

“He definitely did not break that stereotype,” he confirmed. “Shall I give you the grand tour?”

The grand tour did not take long. They had apparated into the main room of the flat, a beautiful hardwood floored sitting room with vaulting ceilings, a large green leather couch, and white walls, which was connected to a rather luxurious looking kitchen. This in particular had surprised Remus, as he had assumed that no Black knew how to cook, nor cared to. The kitchen was connected to a bookshelf lined hallway that held three other doors. One opened to a luxurious marble bathroom with the largest bathtub Remus had ever seen, bar the prefect’s bath back at Hogwarts, and the second to another sunlight filled room, containing only a ginormous bed and a wardrobe. That bedroom had French doors ( _rather_ _apt,_ Remus thought to himself dryly) where the main room had windows, leading to a balcony that overlooked the Jardin Luxembourg. Remus was shocked a Black had ever owned an apartment so airy and light, when usually they seemed insistent on living up to their name down to their décor.

Remus did have to force himself to focus on the apartment instead of the man standing in it, taking care not to stare too much or for too long. He had firmly convinced himself he could tamp down his longing when this plan hit a bit of a snag in the form of the third door in the hallway. He had assumed it was a second bedroom, but Sirius swung it open to reveal a very extensive wine pantry instead. Right. Sirius had said this flat was for Alphard and presumably, his lover. There would have been no need for a second bedroom, and every reason for wine.

“I’ll take the couch tonight, I suppose,” he said lightly. “What do you think the best wine in here is?”

Sirius shook his head. “Remus, you’re thirty-four _and_ a werewolf, I refuse to make you sleep on the couch. I can sleep there as Padfoot.”

“Sirius, you’re thirty-four _and_ a fugitive, I refuse to kick you out of your own bed,” Remus parroted back. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

“So have I.” Sirius glared at him, stubborn to the last. Remus sighed—there was no way either of them could win this one. “But if you insist on having me take the bed,” Sirius continued, to Remus’s great shock. “I am going to insist you sleep in it too. It’s big enough, we’ll be fine.”

Remus knew it was a bad idea but he nodded his agreement, his mouth once again going completely dry. As soon as he agreed, Sirius dropped his glare and lit up with a dazzling smile, spinning in one fluid movement to grab a bottle from one of the shelves.

“And I don’t know about best, but I’m certain that this one will be delicious: a 1960 Domaine de La Romanée-Conti. Year you were born, if I’m not mistaken.”

Remus was so screwed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and let me know what you think!


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